Professor: 'Grading is a quintessentially bourgeois practice'

Professor Emanuele Saccarelli's message in a syllabus for a class on Marxism said, grading "marks the alienation of your intellectual labor, the consummation of the authority of experts set above and in many cases against you, and the reduction of your multisided individuality into a single, convenient short-hand, branding you as more or less suited for the satisfaction of the needs of capital." (Screenshot: OSDEDU, via YouTube)

A self-described Marxist professor at San Diego State University, who is a leader within the international communist movement, has told his students that “grading is a quintessentially bourgeois practice,” and is blaming the capitalist system for unfairly grading students on their individual academic ability. This message, from professor Emanuele Saccarelli, is in a syllabus for a class on Marxism which he has used for the past five years.

According to the syllabus, grading “marks the alienation of your intellectual labor, the consummation of the authority of experts set above and in many cases against you, and the reduction of your multisided individuality into a single, convenient short-hand, branding you as more or less suited for the satisfaction of the needs of capital.”

The syllabus continues, “In a different society, it may be possible for you to study and to learn without having to chase after an elusive paycheck at the same time, without having to satisfy irrational requirements determined by obscure bureaucracies, and without the autocratic supervision of your efforts by a dubious figure endowed with a degree and often a Napoleon complex. Perhaps one day it will be possible for your activity of studying and learning to become a voluntary, unalienated, multisided form of personal development, which will in turn serve as a condition for the social development of our general intellect.”

Students who might hope that Saccarelli, who holds a Ph.D. and has written for the World Socialist Web Site since 1998, would choose not to grade them as a revolt against the bourgeoisie, will be sorely disappointed with the true nature of Saccarelli’s grading “revolution.”

“[S]o long as the capitalist system endures, it is only fitting that you should continue to be subject to its debasing practices,” Saccarelli's syllabus concludes.

As part of their grade, students will be required to read a minimum of three articles each week from the World Socialist Web Site, which is directly owned by the International Committee of the Fourth International, a communist group first started by Soviet revolutionary and mass murderer Leon Trotsky. Students in the class will also read the works of Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky, and other communist authors, before writing a multipage research paper on the benefits of Marxism.

One student in the class, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation, told Red Alert Politics that he was “not expecting a grade higher than a C in this class, especially after my anti-Marxist research paper that I will be turning in at the end of the semester.”

"He's adamant that capitalism and capitalists are the root of all evil and attributes conditions such as war and poverty as direct results of capitalism," the student continued.

Saccarelli did not return a request for comment.

Peter Van Voorhis (@RepublicanPeter) is a conservative activist, commentator, and journalist who focuses on political issues affecting millennials.